


experience, and its decay

by attheborder



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Crossover, Horror, M/M, Memory Loss, POV First Person, Pining, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Surreal, technically crozier POV but also kind of a jonny sims pastiche so like who even knows, the hunt is homophobic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Artifact Description:Oilskin packet of loose pages from the Captain’s Log of HMS Terror, acquired from the personal collection of Doctor Algernon Moss. Retroactively co-filed with Case #9302706 upon cross-referencing with the statement of Percy Fawcett given in 1930.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 28
Kudos: 55





	experience, and its decay

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by the references to the Franklin Expedition in MAG 98 and 133, which hit much harder when one has the context of The Terror to draw on.... SORRY :(
> 
> the title is from the Museum of Jurassic Technology exhibit on the (fictional) theory of [Obliscence.](https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/oblisci.htm)

**_The Magnus Institute  
_ _Artifact Storage_**

_Case #8640514  
_ _Artifact A_

**_Artifact Description:  
_ ** _Oilskin packet of loose pages from the Captain’s Log of HMS Terror, acquired from the personal collection of Doctor Algernon Moss. Retroactively co-filed with Case #9302706 upon cross-referencing with the statement of Percy Fawcett given in 1930._

**_Artifact History:  
_ ** _The HMS Terror was abandoned in 1848, along with her sister ship HMS Erebus. As attested to by interviews conducted with local Inuit people by British and American explorers over the following decades, the men of the expedition all perished of starvation and disease in their attempts to reach Fort Resolution, over six hundred miles to the south._

_How these pages came into possession of Maxwell Rayner was initially unclear; the testimony of Percy Fawcett was helpful in establishing context for the continued existence of the Franklin Expedition, and as such it is possible to assume that other travelers in distant locales may have come across the expedition and acquired the artifact directly._

**_Artifact Effects:  
_ ** _N/A. These papers have been held in the Institute’s collection since the late 19th century, were never part of Leitner’s library, and have no known or observed preternatural or unexplainable physical or metaphysical effects._

**_Artifact Notes:  
_ ** _Whether the travelers encountered and identified by Fawcett and Rimmell were, in an ontological sense, truly the men of the Franklin Expedition themselves, is not a question that is easily answered._

_However, on a more base emotional level, the testimony contained within these pages is enough to convince any reader of their essential reality, however numinous and inexplicable._

_Additionally, this manner of chronicle, incredibly personal, with some sections even verging on the erotic, would never have been entered in an official logbook destined, per Navy rules, for the archives of the Admiralty._

_It can therefore be safely assumed that Captain Crozier did know, on some level, that he would never make it home._

  
  
  


**ARTIFACT TRANSCRIPT**

  
  


We are five of us today: Sir John, Little, Tozer, Jopson, and I. It seems just yesterday there were dozens of us, hauling boats across the barrens of King William Land, our mouths cracked and dry, our joints aching with every heave. 

In truth, I do not know how long ago it was that we left our ships behind, ice-bound and emptied out of all their provisions. 

What I do know, however, is that Sir John was dead long before that day. Slaughtered like an animal on the ice, his scant remains buried, his own words spoken in his honor as a cold wind blew. 

And yet— he lives. He lives, and breathes, and orders us ever forward with all of the authoritative bluster that caused me no great deal of vexation during the years I acted as his second.

Command of the expedition had come at a cost, but it had come, and I had warmed to the mantle as only a man in such conditions could. Reduced back to my former station supporting Sir John, I am afflicted evermore with a horrible impotency. I see what must be done, and yet cannot have it so. 

A bottle of whiskey from our stores was opened after supper. Sir John had never known me to abstain while he was alive; he did not seem to be able to comprehend my refusal. 

“There is plenty to go around, Francis,” he cajoled. “You are a Captain in Her Majesty’s Navy. You deserve this indulgence, after all your hard work to bring us this far.” 

Little, too, was confused at my reticence. He is healthy as Sir John and just as high spirited; I wish it did not pain me so to see them in such a condition.

Only Jopson met my gaze, and nodded in understanding, and distracted the other men from noticing when I poured out the drink into the dirt.

Still, the bottle could not help but to catch my eye; the cut-crystal we carry with us reflecting the light from our fire, singing its ancient, enticing song. 

I admit It would be easy to retreat into inebriation, to dilute myself down into the stupor that was once my refuge. 

But I have been done with easy, since the day we became locked in the ice. We have long left the ships behind, but I still have the feeling of being confined.

Tozer took up his post at the edge of our camp tonight, and is now pacing the perimeter endlessly. He is clean cut and dutiful, his crossband a brilliant white underneath the moonlight. 

I am uneasy, watching him, though I fear I don’t know why. With such a Royal Marine as our protector, surely we are safe. His hands grip the barrel of his gun as he stands stalwart guard. 

In the darkness, something is moaning, long and loud, as if in pain. 

  
  


\---

This log-book ought to have been filled ten times over by now; yet whenever I turn to the next blank page I never find my entries to have gone past the halfway mark. 

Goodsir, too, makes constant use of his pen. His endless fascination with the flora and fauna of our surroundings is an obsession that borders on insanity. Though I do not begrudge him his livelihood, it is hard not to feel slighted by the lack of attention he pays to our men in comparison.

You were always far more interested in the natural world than I. I think you, like Goodsir, might be able to find the beauty in this madness. Perhaps if you were here to show me what he sees in it, point out the benefits of trying to make sense where there is none, I might feel more grace towards the good doctor’s efforts. 

The camera Goodsir carries in a heavy bag upon his back was unloaded early this morning and set up at the edge of camp, capturing us as we stood in a line. Today we are seven, not counting Goodsir: Sir John, myself, Little, Jopson, Des Voeux, Hartnell, and a ship’s boy, Young. 

Goodsir packed the camera away again, and emerged from his tent an hour later with the printed daguerrotype itself. His hands shook as he displayed the plate to me. He did not speak, nor try to explain what I saw there, though I’m sure he will find time to engage in conjecture in the days to come. 

No faces appeared in the photograph. None of our figures, straight-backed as we held stiffly for the camera’s exposure, could be seen. Not visible, even, was the vast canopy of fir trees, fragrant in their austere silence, that has surrounded us these last few days.

The daguerrotype only showed, in stark monotone, the horribly familiar tundra of the endless North.

\---

As we walked today, Jopson asked me if I remembered the day of the mutiny. 

“Mutiny?” I repeated, the word bitter like an apothecary’s remedy on my tongue. 

“Yes, sir. Hickey and his men.” 

With some effort, I could recall the flogging, yes, and the suspicions I harbored about Hickey. 

But Jopson had to tell me, as if a fairy story, of the man’s betrayal. The aborted hanging, the battle that ensued, the abscondment with a full boat of supplies. 

How could I have forgotten? The shock of the revelation must have been visible on my face, because Jopson’s creased in pity, his astonishing eyes widening sympathetically. “I’m so sorry, sir,” said my steward.

When I look at him, I see overlaid his face as it was, wracked with pain, bleeding from scorbutic wounds, his eyes dulled and insensate. Why must I recall that with such intensity, and yet forget so much of what came before? 

“How many times have you had to remind me?” I asked, daring myself to be unafraid of the answer.

But I did not receive one. Jopson merely shook his head. “It hardly matters. Soon we will reach the Passage, and this will all be behind us. I cannot wait for you to be received in England, sir, and accorded all the honors you deserve.” 

I turned from him, then, and we walked on in silence. He is alight from the inside, the same fire that burns within Sir John and the lieutenants, driving them forward towards a horizon that is always just out of reach. 

I wish I had someone to speak with, about my doubts, my fears. Companionship is the truest balm to thoughts such as those that storm through my head these long nights, and I’ve none of it here. 

I have no true companion, no equal. Even dear Blanky, when he is with us, is single-minded as Sir John, though his enthrallment finds a different target. 

He limps about the camp in the evenings, waving his walking stick, daring the beast, the Tuunbaq, to come and fetch him, to fight him, to face him. “Where are ye? Come out and get me, ye great noisome brute!” 

Though we move as one, that is mere illusion. Our purpose is splintered. 

Sir John is looking for the Passage. Blanky seeks revenge. Goodsir seeks answers. 

I, myself, am only looking for you. 

\---

Our condition, as we walk, is dire. Our rations dwindle, day after day, though they somehow seem to never quite run out. We are forever on the edge of starvation, yet Sir John is hale and ruddy as I ever knew him to be, and his confidence has never been more oppressive. He assures us, every day, that the Passage is nearly within our reach. 

“There will be medals, men. Feasts and celebrations. It will make the reception Sir James received look like a child’s birthday.” 

Gore and Le Vesconte cheered, at the head of our party, as we trekked onwards, today through marshy, humid flatlands that sucked muddily at our boots and sent swarms of flies about our ears. 

But I stayed resolutely silent, almost sulkily so. This sullenness went unnoticed, and finally I asked Sir John outright: “Are you dissatisfied with my performance?” 

“What a thing to ask, Francis! Have you lost your confidence?” he replied, good-naturedly. “Never fear. You are as dutiful as I could ever wish you to be.”

I found myself almost wishing he would insult me again, call me the foulest things, gibe at my impotence and mock my pursuit of Sophy. It would be better than the frenzy that has gripped him. It would be more true.

But I do not dare to wish him dead, killed by one of the beasts that stalk us, dismembered in the night by the Tuunbaq. I do not wish him starved, diseased, diminished in any way. Despite our disagreements, despite his mistakes, he is still my commander. I am still his second.

And there is more to it than that: Goodsir has confided in me, privately, that he believes that if Sir John were to be killed, then whatever unaccountable phenomena has kept us breathing and moving forwards these many days would cease to operate, and we would be— God only knows what we would be, if not lost, for certainly we are already that. Something worse. 

“We are bound to him, I believe,” Goodsir said, his voice thick with an emotion that could have been fear, but just as likely could have been awe. 

He told me he was working on a system of categorizing the strange phenomena that we encounter; he speaks of the potential application of a defined taxonomical structure to the understanding of our surroundings. 

I believe he is better off leaving such things well alone, and told him so. 

“With respect, I don't think this is the wisest use of your time,” I said. “Your focus should be on the men. See to their needs, and their health. Getting lost in these abstractions when we face more material threats could cost us dearly.” 

“Yes, sir,” he said, and put his papers away, though I think he continues to write when I am otherwise occupied. 

\---

This morning, as we packed up our camp to set forth once more, I noticed Bridgens emerging from his tent, smiling as he greeted Peglar, handing him a book.

As far as I could recall I had not seen either of them in days, weeks, even. Months? I had thought them— _known_ them— gone utterly. We had wandered through basaltic fields and across arid steppes and many men had come and gone, but not them. Until now. 

They were both chatting amiably; then Bridgens embraced the younger man, in a fashion at first as a friend, and then gradually a deeper intimacy followed, a closeness of hands and faces that in every aspect spoke of love, and trust. 

Nobody else in the camp seemed to notice this breach. I found myself biting the inside of my cheek so hard as to draw blood. The pain centered me, drew my anger down into a manageable pinprick, and allowed me to put my thoughts in order. 

How can it be that they two are able to find this solace, and I am yet desolate of anything resembling it? By what infernal mechanism does this madness operate, and why has it marked me out for this particular torture?

James, by Christ, I will make this land cough you up. I will not rest until I see your face again. 

\---

We are sixteen men today, trekking through a land of green hills and hedges. It is wild and untamed as any place we have passed through but there is something indefinably of Ireland about it, something that makes me ache. 

Blanky is distractible, muttering about the bear, searching the ground for its prints; we are at such cross-purposes I cannot bear it. We may laugh together around the fire at night but the lights inside us burn forever a different hue. 

Alone with my thoughts, I worry. I worry that when I find you, you might well be at home at Sir John’s side once again. I worry that when I find you, you will take to your station and not wish to leave it again. 

But worrying is better left to those who cannot act. And in every action, I work to find you. It is only a matter of time. Sometimes I think I can hear your breathing, calm and unlabored, beside me as I sleep. I never slept beside you, not in either of our berths nor in a tent, during the weeks we spent traversing the wastes. 

Unless I did.

After all, I cannot trust my memory; I cannot trust the men; I cannot trust the landscapes, slipping past us as if panoramas on exhibition, depositing monsters on our doorsteps with almost playful regularity, like cats bringing vermin to their owners.

I cannot even trust this log-book of mine. Entries seem to rearrange themselves in accordance to their own whims. When I seek out some record I am sure I had made a mere day or two ago, I find it instead dozens of entries back— or sometimes, not at all. 

\---

This morning when we set out, a desert stretched out before us. Not the endless, shifting sands or the parched scrublands we have passed through, but a dusty red land, dotted with bristling vegetation. 

Though I wear my slops and underneath them my uniform, kitted out to polar specifications, I feel no heat. I walk, on and on. Twelve of us today, and none of us sweat. 

Irving was the first one to spot them. He shouted, and called a halt; he passed his telescope to me, and I peered through it to see the unmistakable silhouettes of men, walking towards us.

I recalled the Arctic mirage that caused Sir John Ross no small amount of humiliation; seeing a mountain range where there was none, causing him to misjudge the shape of Lancaster Sound and force a retreat into Baffin Bay.

These were no Croker’s Mountains. Across the scrubland, the shapes resolved into another party of living human beings. My heart began to beat as they came into clear view— could it be that we were finally about to be reunited? 

But these were strangers, I saw that soon enough. Their clothes were unfamiliar, antique-seeming, like something out of a painting in an exhibition. There was a middle-aged man, ragged and grey-bearded, and a young boy beside him, holding tightly to his hand. Behind him walked four or five men, similarly attired in what looked to be antique sailing clothes and furred hats.

“Hail!” cried the bearded man, raising a hand, as we met underneath the blazing sun.

“Greetings, men!” came Sir John’s voice from behind me, as he strode forwards confidently. “How goes your search?” 

“We are nearly upon it now,” the stranger assured Sir John, and they immediately fell into discussion about latitudes, straits, currents, ice.

It was not until Bridgens whispered to Peglar, and I could not help but overhear, that I realized this was Henry Hudson himself. The legendary explorer, discoverer of the Arctic bay that takes his name, had disappeared in the seventeenth century, searching for the Northwest Passage. His crew mutinied and set him, his son, and those loyal to him adrift in a shallop, as they retreated to England. He was never seen again.

And as soon as this tidbit of Passage history came back to me, I remembered in tandem the night of the gallows; the fog and the guns and the roar of the creature.

I had forgotten again. I had forgotten how it ended. Perhaps one of these days I shall forget everything at once, and believe myself back at Greenhithe or Eliot Place or Banbridge or a grand ballroom, carved out of the Antarctic ice. 

I must not let this happen. To go back to those times would be to return to a time when I did not know you, or worse— a time when we were forever at odds. 

\---

I awoke this morning to Jopson above me, eyes wide and fearful. 

“You were lost to us weeks ago, sir,” he said, and I saw his hands tremble, as though desperate to grab hold of mine, but too tightly lashed to the sledge of duty to do so.

I tried to remember. It came to me very slowly. We had been beset, as we navigated an endless prairie, by fearsome creatures, their limbs distended, their voices echoing endlessly in ways which hurt to hear. One must have run me through, with its fingers like knives. 

“I am here now,” I responded, and stood to join the rest of the men. Hudson and his crew were no longer with us, I saw; but Goodsir had returned, and was conducting an experiment with a half-dozen compasses. 

He told me of how the devices, when they allowed themselves to be read, told that we have not moved a single mile since leaving the ships behind. 

This hardly seemed to matter to me, but I let him have the joy of his discovery. I had long given up on trying to redirect his focus towards caring for the men, when they are wounded by unspeakable horrors, when they are starving or bleeding or choking on their own breath.

They will be back soon. They always return. Everyone does, in their time, except for you.

\---

Sir John’s impatience to find the Passage is such that on many a night we do not even bother to set up a true camp. “We are close,” he tells us. “Men, we are close. You have performed admirably, and are within a hair’s breadth of your reward.” 

I hate that damned word. _Close._ Hate it, have always hated it. We are no closer to the Passage than I am to being a performing penguin. 

As the men sleep around me in the open air— three or six or thirteen of them, I can never quite tell these days— I stand and make my way out of earshot to a distant outcropping of rock, leaning up against it as I take myself in hand. 

I feel no shame about giving into my desire. We are still far beyond vanity now, despite the pretense of Sir John and those in his thrall that the expedition still operates under the banner of the Admiralty, and all the codes and precedents that it entails. 

A man must find ways to survive, if he is to make it through a trial like this. And this is mine: imagining you stumbling out from behind the rocks, falling to me with relief, perhaps weak or tired or injured but alive. I gather you in my arms and feel your heartbeat against my own, feel your leanness, your strength, and I hear your voice speak my name again, after so long. 

I wish I could remember the last time I saw you. This place will not allow me that, but it allows me this: a quick release, a muffled cry into my own hand, a reassembly, a slow walk back, and then finally, a dreamless, deathlike sleep. 

  
  


\---

  
  


On a vast, rocky shore beneath towering cliffs this afternoon we were rejoined by Cornelius Hickey. He lingered round the edges of our party as we moved ever onwards, the scent of his cigarette blowing towards me on the wind. 

I don’t know where he’d found tobacco. Our provisions, always meagre and forever not quite enough, never included it. 

I spoke to him, as I speak to all the men. Encouraging, kind. A captain’s duty, to tend to the health of his crew; to raise their spirits and keep them on firm footing. 

“I see you, Captain,” was all he replied, but this simple acknowledgement satisfied me. 

Hodgson approached me a few minutes later. “Who is that man?” he asked. “Why do you greet him as a friend?” 

“Lieutenant, that is Mr Hickey,” I said patiently, as though explaining something to a child. And indeed, it was Hickey. The vulpine grace with which he moved was unmistakable. 

Hodgson grew distraught. He insisted, “Hickey? Cornelius Hickey?” 

“Yes, the caulker’s mate. Is there something wrong?” 

“Captain Crozier, that man is not Hickey. I checked Hickey in at muster. That man— I have never seen him before, I swear. You must be mistaken.” 

“Do you think I do not know my own men?” I said. 

“No, sir, I just think we ought to—” 

“Your mind is playing tricks on you. Leave him be, that’s an order.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Such was my mistake. Only a few hours later we came across Hodgson dead, his throat slashed and his face mutilated beyond all recognition. 

A triumphant cry from the cliffs above as McDonald and I inspected the body made us look up in alarm— for a moment, the silhouette of Hickey was visible, its arm outstretched in a wave, before disappearing. 

It came to me, then, that I had forgotten the mutiny once more. I had forgotten the men who perpetrated it; I had forgotten the gallows, and who’d been set to hang.

Had I ever really known Hickey’s face? When I think back to it now, try to imagine it beneath the noose, I see a shifting, morphing emptiness, a muddle of features that will not resolve. 

Somehow, yet, it smiles.

\---

James! Oh, James—

Such ecstasy I have never known, have never deserved, and yet it is now mine to have.

You took me into your arms, as I’d dreamed. I hardly dared call you by your name, lest it invoke some fearsome law, and cause you to be pulled back into the jungle from which you emerged. 

So I whispered, _you, you,_ over and over— but you had no similar fear, and you spoke my name, just once, into my ear: _Francis!_ The feeling was indescribable.

We will leave the rest of the men to their endless chase. I will not need to walk a single step more now that I know that you are safe. 

Tomorrow we wake, and start anew; tonight I sleep by your side, at last.

\---

I thought I knew it well, by now, the cruelty of this existence. I did not. Not until today.

Yesterday, a man who either was or was not Cornelius Hickey killed Lieutenant Hodgson. I went to sleep barely even having washed the blood off of my hands, falling exhausted into my tent. 

And this morning, I awoke to find the entry preceding, written in my own hand, though no day elapsed for it to have been written during. No corresponding memory in my mind. No body breathing beside me when I woke, face slack with sleep, chestnut hair curling at your cheeks. 

I could have set the entire log-book aflame; I could have thrown it into the cold sea that we are camped near; yet I heard Goodsir’s voice in my head as I considered it, reminding me of the rules of this place such as he’d discovered them, and I knew that if I were to try such a thing, the book would return to its place in my pack within hours. 

So I left the entry as it is. But I will not let this drag me into despair. I will write new entries, detailing my search, for as long as it takes.

I will find you. I will. 

I am so very, very close. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me screaming about TMA & the terror, among other things, on [twitter](http://twitter.com/areyougonnabe) & [tumblr!](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com)


End file.
